This was The Fantasy Guild Book Club pick for August 2021!

4/5

The days of Ebora's glory are long past, and after the mysterious death of their tree god during the last war with Jure'lia, the Eborians, magically touched creatures who were once endowed with god-like features and very long lifespans, were reduced to less than a shadow of their former selves, having to invade nearby settlements and brutally drink human blood to give them a portion of the rejuvenation their tree god used to give. However, the temporary euphoria human blood gave them came at the cost of triggering a terrible disease that decimated their bodies and led to a slow and painful death. Therefore, the Eborians were left with two options, either choose to bask in the temporary benefits of human blood only to succumb to the terrible disease it eventually brought, or slowly wither away to old age. Tormalin the Oathless, one of the few Eborians still surviving, decides to leave this dying world behind and spend the last years of his life exploring the world alongside its sensual pleasures. He eventually meets up with an eccentric explorer, Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon, who is on a mission to discover the secrets left behind by the Jure'lia, particularly, their flying transports called Behemoths, which attract mysterious glowing spirits all around them, spirits that brutally kill any human they touch by turning their flesh inside-out. A third member eventually joins their party, a girl called Noon, who is a Fel-Witch, considered to be an abomination by society and imprisoned on an island by an organization called the Winnowry, who make use of Fel-Witch magic to create dreamless sleep inducing drugs. After a horrifying nightmare showing the return of the Jure'lia, Noon manages to escape and joins the party.

The world here is complex, and the stakes are always high. The armed conflicts that take place between characters feel raw and dangerous, and Jen Williams is an expert in making the reader stay on their toes, worried about the well-being of the protagonists. Fighting the luminous spirits that haunt the Behemoths carries the risk of their bodies being turned inside out, using Fel-magic to save the day carries the consequence of deforming innocent characters with Winnowfire, and exploring the broken remains of the Behemoths involves meeting your demise within. The stakes are never low in this story, so there is a constant sense of danger and excitement that keeps the reader wanting to rush through the pages, just to find out what happens next.

What about the slow parts of the story? Even these pages keep the reader hanging on to every word, because when the characters aren't fighting off wolves, blighted animals, spirits and swarms of alien insects, they are uncovering the fascinating aspects of the vividly complex world the author so magnificently built. From the interesting backstories of the characters, to the tragic history surrounding the Jure'lia invasion, I was itching to learn more about the nooks and crannies of this universe. The insect civilization of Jure'lia definitely succeeded in acting as terrifying antagonists and the graphic representation of the atrocities they commit was surprisingly gruesome. I felt itchy while reading about how swarms of insects made their way down people's throats, ate away their organs from the inside and controlled their bodies as vassals.

Characterization was mostly decent, and I was personally pretty intrigued by the more intense and controversial characters like Hestillion and Lin. Tormalin wasn't really someone I cared too much for, and his character was romanticized as some version of a vampire who's really good with women in bed, which isn't wrong but I didn't see much more depth to his character, just a hedonist who tends to escape from his problems. Noon was fun to read because of her impressive powers, but I felt disconnected from her and didn't feel that same investment I felt while reading about Hestillion and Lin, though her hate/love dynamic with Tormalin was amusing, although some developments felt a bit rushed. Vintage, their leader, felt inaccessible for most of the book and I was left questioning her motives, which was what I assume the author's intention. Interestingly enough, the characters who had a lot of action and plot going on, with all their questing, felt the least interesting to me character wise, while the ones who didn't have much action, felt really well developed and interesting as characters. A positive spin on this would be the fact that where there is no character depth that intrigues me, the plot would captivate me, and where there isn't much active plot, the characters are interesting to read about regardless.

The ending was very well written, and does a good job in hooking the reader to the series, even though some aspects of the final climax were a bit fuzzy. For example,

Spoiler

during the final battle, we didn't see what became of Mother Fast after Tor's initial attempts to save her, unless I missed that part. Also, during the Jure'lia invasion, the insects seemed to conveniently stop whenever an important conversation was happening, while I had expected them to be more aggressive and unrelenting.

Regardless, these minor questions and concerns I had didn't severely impact my enjoyment of the story.

Overall, this book is really good, and it is definitely a hidden gem in the fantasy genre and I am grateful for the opportunity to have discovered it! Will definitely be continuing this series.

Highly recommended!